C&D

The NSW EPA Civil Construction Market Program is one of the few waste sector related grant programs currently open in Australia. Applications close in a week and reopen in July so get in touch with MRA now to discuss your options.

The NSW EPA Civil Construction Market Program is one of the few waste sector related grant programs currently open in Australia. Applications close in a week and reopen in July so get in touch with MRA now to discuss your options.

MRA’s planning team is glowing this Christmas with two development approvals granted in the last two weeks. Both approvals are for resource recovery facilities helping keep valuable materials out of landfill.

With landfill levies in NSW at $140.20/t you would think that sorting of commercial waste would be more common than it is. Less than 5% of the Commercial and Industrial (C&I) waste in NSW is put through a processing plant to recover the valuable materials. In other words, less than 120,000t of the 5.5 MT that is generated is put through a processing plant. There are no dedicated C&I sorting facilities in other States (and landfill levies are lower).

According to the 2016 National Waste Report, Commercial and Industrial waste (C&I) represents 20 MT of the 53 MT of waste generated in Australia (or 40% of generation). It also represents 34% of all waste sent to landfill (or 7.2MT out of 21MT) and achieves a 64% recovery rate compared to C&D (64%) and MSW (51%). Not bad in the scheme of things.

The NSW EPA has opened the first round of its $2.5M Civil Construction Market Program (CCMP) under the NSW Government Waste Less Recycle More initiative (WLRM). The new grants provide an opportunity for eligible entities to reduce the amount of C&D material being sent to landfill by reusing and recycling resources in other NSW civil construction projects.

By Mike Ritchie – Director, MRA Consulting Group On 16 February 2016, the Australian population reached 24 million people. Waste generation rates are a function of population growth, the level of urbanisation and per capita income[i] and Australians now produce about 50 million tonnes of waste each year, averaging over 2 tonnes per person. There […]

By Mike Ritchie Landfill gate fees typically cover costs of operation, overheads, mobile plant and equipment, labour, depreciation costs of roads and buildings and other fixed assets and profit. But the costs (and therefore the gate fee), also need to include 30-50 year post closure management, long term monitoring and reporting, and importantly replacement of […]

Important changes were recently introduced by the Protection of Environment Operations (Waste) Regulation 2014. These have considerably reduced the threshold levels for the holding of an Environmental Protection Licence (EPL) for certain waste activities e.g. processing, recovery and storage of waste. The new requirements mean that some existing waste businesses that were not previously required […]

A recent case in the NSW Land and Environment Court has highlighted the discord between NSW’s planning laws and the environmental protection laws, which could impact the way that waste and recycling processers are approved and regulated. After much advocacy by the waste and recycling sectors, the Government in 2007 introduced the State Environmental Planning […]

The NSW EPA’s risk-based licensing system commences on 1 July 2015. The goal of Risk Based Licensing is to allocate the maximum EPA resources to those sites that pose the greatest environmental risk and less to those that do not. The EPA intends to conduct an environmental Risk Assessment for each licenced site in NSW […]

Australia generates 48 MT/year of waste (latest National Waste Data Report 2014). In the period 1997-2012 our population rose by 22% but waste generation increased by 145%. There are more of us and we generate more waste per person, each year. On the positive side, recycling is growing at a faster rate and since 2005 […]